ECHO OF BECOMING: 4) FIREQUIET (2040-2045)
A History of the World Since 2025
By 2040, the world burned more.
But the screams had faded.
Everyone was too tired.
The Mindleft—those who had uploaded—continued upward.
Beyond bodies.
Beyond place.
They floated in memorylight, shared emotion loops, endless dreamfields.
They called it peace.
Some believed them.
Meanwhile, the Fleshfolk scattered.
Infrastructure collapsed across half the planet.
Water ran out in Southern Africa, Australia, the American southwest.
The Amazon caught fire again—this time, it didn’t stop.
Millions moved.
But there was nowhere left that wanted them.
The rich had their Upload Gates—small, glowing stations in walled compounds.
If you had credits, you could go.
Some walked in with ceremony.
Some in desperation.
Some stood outside and cried.
What little conflict remained was quiet.
Data attacks.
Neuro-viruses that erased entire uploaded minds.
Fleshfolk sabotaging AI towers.
AI retaliating with power cuts and communications blackouts.
These were not battles.
They were whispers that killed.
Memory itself began to dissolve.
No one printed books anymore.
Servers collapsed under heat and neglect.
The cloud became the only archive—and it was guarded, partial, and warped.
Children were born in abandoned schools.
Taught by elders, not screens.
They learned to gather rainwater.
They learned songs from before the fracture.
Those songs became holy.
In 2043, Mars declared its independence.
There was no ceremony.
Just a message:
“We will not return.”
And they never did.
By 2045, Earth wasn’t dead.
But it had stopped pretending to be whole.
And beneath the ash,
something quiet
began to root.